The world we experience is governed by classical physics. How we move, where we are, and how fast we’re going are all determined by the classical assumption that we can only exist in one place at any one moment in time.
But in the quantum world, the behavior of individual atoms is governed by the eerie principle that a particle’s location is a probability. An atom, for instance, has a certain chance of being in one location and another chance of being at another location, at the same exact time.
When particles interact, purely as a consequence of these quantum effects, a host of odd phenomena should ensue. But observing such purely quantum mechanical behavior of interacting particles amid the overwhelming noise of the classical world is a tricky undertaking.
Scientists have come closer than ever before to creating a laboratory-scale imitation of a black hole that emits Hawking radiation, the particles predicted to escape black holes due to quantum mechanical effects.
The black hole analogue, reported in Nature Physics1, was created by trapping sound waves using an ultra cold fluid. Such objects could one day help resolve the so-called black hole ‘information paradox’ — the question of whether information that falls into a black hole disappears forever.
The physicist Stephen Hawking stunned cosmologists 40 years ago when he announced that black holes are not totally black, calculating that a tiny amount of radiation would be able to escape the pull of a black hole2. This raised the tantalising question of whether information might escape too, encoded within the radiation.
The fundamental forces of physics govern the matter comprising the Universe, yet exactly how these forces work together is still not fully understood. The existence of Hawking radiation — the particle emission from near black holes — indicates that general relativity and quantum mechanics must cooperate. But directly observing Hawking radiation from a black hole is nearly impossible due to the background noise of the Universe, so how can researchers study it to better understand how the forces interact and how they integrate into a “Theory of Everything”?
According to Haruna Katayama, a doctoral student in Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, since researchers cannot go to the Hawking radiation, Hawking radiation must be brought to the researchers. She has proposed a quantum circuit that acts as a black hole laser, providing a lab-bench black hole equivalent with advantages over previously proposed versions. The proposal was published on Sept. 27 Scientific Reports.
The universe is governed by two sets of seemingly incompatible laws of physics – there’s the classical physics we’re used to on our scale, and the spooky world of quantum physics on the atomic scale. MIT physicists have now observed the moment atoms switch from one to the other, as they form intriguing “quantum tornadoes.”
Things that seem impossible to our everyday understanding of the world are perfectly possible in quantum physics. Particles can essentially exist in multiple places at once, for instance, or tunnel through barriers, or share information across vast distances instantly.
These and other odd phenomena can arise as particles interact with each other, but frustratingly the overarching world of classical physics can interfere and make it hard to study these fragile interactions. One way to amplify quantum effects is to cool atoms right down to a fraction above absolute zero, creating a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that can exhibit quantum properties on a larger, visible scale.
From the cosmic microwave background to Feynman diagrams — what are the underlying rules that work to create patterns of action, force and consequence that make up our universe? Brian’s new book “Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe” is available now: https://geni.us/clegg. Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/RZB95znAGRE
Brian Clegg will explore the phenomena that make up the very fabric of our world by examining ten essential sequenced systems. From diagrams that show the deep relationships between space and time to the quantum behaviours that rule the way that matter and light interact, Brian will show how these patterns provide a unique view of the physical world and its fundamental workings.
Brian Clegg was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, UK, and attended the Manchester Grammar School, then read Natural Sciences (specialising in experimental physics) at Cambridge University. After graduating, he spent a year at Lancaster University where he gained a second MA in Operational Research, a discipline developed during the Second World War to apply mathematics and probability to warfare and since widely applied to business problem solving. Brian now concentrates on writing popular science books, with topics ranging from infinity to ‘how to build a time machine.’ He has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous magazines and newspapers, including Nature, BBC Focus, BBC History, Good Housekeeping, The Times, The Observer, Playboy, The Wall Street Journal and Physics World.
COUNTDOWN TO RELEASE: Here comes the next and final installment in The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series ― The Omega Singularity: Universal Mind & The Fractal Multiverse ― which is now available to pre-order as a Kindle eBook on Amazon. In this final book of the series, we discuss a number of perspectives on quantum cosmology, computational physics, theosophy and eschatology. How could dimensionality be transcended yet again? What is the fractal multiverse? What is the ultimate destiny of our universe? Why does it matter to us? What is the Omega Singularity? These are some of the questions addressed in this concluding volume of my eBook series.
This final book V of The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series is an admittedly highly speculative theoretical work where we’ll be testing the limits of our imagination envisioning the prospects of our distant future and the deepest secrets of hyperreality. In our fractal, computational Omniverse (all multiversal structure combined, all that is) one may assume that an infinitely large number of civilizational minds, syntellects, have followed or will follow a path, similar to ours, in their evolutionary processes. At the highest level of existence and perceptual experience, that we can rightfully call ‘Dimensionality of Hypermind’, universal minds would form some sort of multiversal network of minds, layer after layer seemingly ad infinitum.
The uncertainty principle, first introduced by Werner Heisenberg in the late 1920’s, is a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics. In the quantum world, particles like the electrons that power all electrical product can also behave like waves. As a result, particles cannot have a well-defined position and momentum simultaneously. For instance, measuring the momentum of a particle leads to a disturbance of position, and therefore the position cannot be precisely defined.
IBM has created the world’s largest superconducting quantum computer as of 2021.
The tech company developed a 127-qubit quantum computer. This is over double the size of comparable machines made by Google in 2019 and the University of Science and Technology of China in 2020.
IBM claims it has created the world’s largest superconducting quantum computer, surpassing the size of state-of-the-art machines from Google and from researchers at a Chinese university. Previous devices have demonstrated up to 60 superconducting qubits, or quantum bits, working together to solve problems, but IBM’s new Eagle processor more than doubles that by stringing together 127.
The field of experimental quantum communication promises ways of efficient and unconditional secure information exchange in quantum states. The possibility of transferring quantum information forms a cornerstone of the emerging field of quantum communication and quantum computation. Recent breakthroughs in quantum computation with superconducting circuits trigger a demand for quantum communication channels between superconducting processors separated in space at microwave length frequencies. To pursue this goal, Kirill G. Fedorov, and a team of scientists in Germany, Finland and Japan demonstrated unconditional quantum teleportation to propagate coherent microwave states by exploring two-mode squeezing and analog feedforward across a distance of 0.42 m. The researchers achieved a teleportation fidelity of F= 0.689±0.004, which exceeded the asymptotic no-cloning threshold, preventing the use of classical error correction methods on quantum states. The quantum state of the teleported state was preserved to open the avenue towards unconditional security in microwave quantum communication.
Quantum teleportation (QT).
The promise of quantum communication is based on the delivery of efficient and unconditionally secure ways to exchange information by exploring the quantum laws of physics. Quantum teleportation (QT) is an exemplary protocol that stands out to allow the disembodied and safe transfer of unknown quantum states using quantum entanglement and classical communication as resources. Recent progress in quantum computation with superconducting circuits has led to quantum communication between spatially separated superconducting processes functioning at microwave length frequencies. Methods to achieve this communication task includes the propagation of two-mode squeezed (TMS) microwaves to entangle remote qubits and teleport microwave states to interface between remote superconducting systems. Fedorov et al. demonstrated the deterministic QT of coherent microwave states by exploring two-mode squeezing and analog feedforward across a distance of 0.
